


Contact High

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Fluff, M/M, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2657153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin has a panic attack at the grocery store, and Sam comes to the rescue even though he’s in heat.  Sexual awkwardness and a heart-to-heart talk in the car follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contact High

Kevin is totally fine when he goes into the grocery store. He feels proud, honestly. It’s the first time he’s been out of the bunker without one of the Winchesters as an escort, and he made the walk into Lebanon without any problem. Once he got into the city the sheer number of people on the streets was a little overwhelming, but Lebanon is a small, sleepy town, and it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

He’s nearly at the back of the store, by the bakery, when he starts having chest pains. The walls close in on him and spots of gray flicker in his vision. It’s suddenly, undeniably clear that any or all of the people browsing the aisle around him could be demons. It’s a trap.

He darts out of the aisle and looks for somewhere to hide. He sees a storage room door blocked off by plastic sheeting and ducks inside, taking cover behind a stack of orange crates. He huddles there for the next fifteen minutes, his pulse rattling his hands, and tries to get himself under control.

It’s useless. Even if he managed to sprint for the door of the grocery store he’d still have to make his way through town, and then down the long, abandoned road that leads back to the bunker. He’d just end up defeated halfway through, and the Winchesters would have to come find him shivering in a ditch.

He calls Dean. No answer. He calls Dean’s other phone, and then his other other phone with the same result. He tries them all a dozen times over the next ten minutes without success.

He shouldn’t call Sam. Like, seriously, he really shouldn’t. Sam’s laid up on the second day of his peak heat, and barring a fire, monster attack, or something else equally dire he shouldn’t be asked to do anything until the day after tomorrow. It’s not that he can’t go out—God knows, people go clubbing while they’re in heat—but they don’t usually tromp through a grocery store in the middle of the day when there are kids around. And they especially don’t do it when they’re a 6”5 omega in the middle of rural Kansas. Kevin’s cool with omegas, one of his best friends in high school was a mixed sex guy, but this isn’t the place to let your freak flag fly. Realistically, it’s not like Sam’s going to get crucified next to the bagged salad, but it’ll be weird for him, and Kevin doesn’t want to put him through that.

He peers out from behind the orange crate. The front doors look as remote as the farthest reaches of space. He dials Sam’s number.

“Kevin?” Sam sounds groggy.

“Hey, do you know where Dean is? He’s not answering his phone.” The chest pains have stopped, but his hand is still unsteady enough that he’s having a hard time keeping the phone to his ear.

“Why are you calling me?” Sam’s suddenly wide awake. “You’re not in the bunker?”

“No, I’m at the grocery store in Lebanon.” Kevin tries to redirect the conversation toward what he wants. “I’ve called all Dean’s phones and he’s not picking up. Where is he?”

“He met a girl in town last night. Last text I got was ‘she has a twin.’ He could be out of touch all weekend. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Kevin groans. “You don’t have a number I can reach him at?” Dean’s going to be just thrilled to get called away from twins to rescue Kevin from the monsters in his head, but it’s still better than the alternative.

“If he’s not answering, he’s not answering.” Sam sounds offended, like Kevin’s wronged him by going to Dean first. “What’s so important?”

“Nothing.” And by any objective measure that’s true. He doesn’t really believe the people outside the stockroom are demons. He can see why, from an outsider’s point of view, that thought is crazy. But at the same time another part of him is mortally terrified of the shapes passing by on the other side of the plastic sheeting, and no amount of common sense will talk it down. He just can’t get his feet back under him.

“I’m not in the mood for this.” Sam’s pissed. This must be the last thing he wants to deal with right now. “Talk.”

“Okay, okay. I freaked out a little because the grocery store is maybe full of demons, and now I’m hiding in the stockroom. I was kind of hoping Dean might come pick me up.”

“It’s all right, I’ll come get you.” Sam’s voice has softened, suddenly kind and reassuring. Kevin detects a note of pity and he doesn’t appreciate it.

“I’m fine. Really. I walked here and I can walk back. You shouldn’t have to go out in your condition.”

“My ‘condition’?” Sam sounds amused. “It’s not Victorian England. You can say ‘heat.’ And it’s a free country. I can go to the grocery store if I want to.” Great. Now Kevin’s given him something to prove.

“Are there any actual demons there, or do you think this is just a panic attack?” Sam says. When Kevin doesn’t answer immediately he adds, “I’m coming either way, I just want to know what I’m walking into.”

“Panic attack.” Kevin raises his head as far as he dares and watches the shadows flicker against the plastic sheeting. He’s chilled by the sight of them. Monsters, all. Sam will never make it to the stockroom. They’re all waiting to eat him. “But I’m not sure. Be ready to fight.”

“Done,” Sam says. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

It’s the longest twenty minutes of Kevin’s life. What if Sam doesn’t come? What if he comes and they kill him? And beneath those thoughts another, saner part of him is telling him how pathetic he is for needing to drag Sam out of the bunker while he’s in heat to stage a make-believe rescue.

He smells Sam before he sees him, the usual Sam-smell warmer and stronger, layered over with the fever-bright edge of heat. Sam’s politely shut himself up in his bedroom since his heat kicked into high gear yesterday, but the smell’s gotten into all Kevin’s clothes anyway. It screws with his head, making him feel a confusing mix of horny and hopeful, frustrated and excited.

“Hey, you okay?” Sam’s voice says softly. Sam must be able to smell Kevin too, his senses heightened by the heat. “Do you think you can--”

Sam rounds the orange crates and Kevin bursts out laughing. “What are you wearing, man?”

Sam’s shirt is three sizes too small, straining across his chest like he’s about to rip through it Incredible Hulk-style. His leather jacket is bunched up under his arms, the hem riding up his back.

Sam looks down at himself, somewhere between amused and embarrassed. “I thought maybe if I put on Dean’s dirty shirt and his jacket it might cover up the smell. Is it working?”

The room is already filling up with Sam’s scent, stifling and heady. “Not even a little. It smells like you haven’t showered in a week.”

“I showered yesterday.” Sam’s annoyed. “I didn’t shower today because I was in too much of a hurry to run out here and help you.”

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry,” Kevin says, but he can’t help laughing. It fizzes up in his chest, giddy and joyful. At first Sam looks pissed, and then Kevin sees something click in his expression, a dawning understanding. And then he seems to catch it a little himself, laughing and shaking his head like he can’t believe he’s doing this.

After a moment Sam takes a deep breath and gets himself under control. “All right, let’s get out of here,” he says, still smiling.

Kevin sobers up when he steps out of the safety of the stockroom. So many people, so many ways he and Sam could die. He follows Sam with his head down and his shoulders hunched. Only the invisible thread of Sam’s heat keeps Kevin putting one foot in front of the other. In one way it’s lucky Sam is the one who came to get him; he’s not sure how Dean would’ve gotten him out of here short of dragging him.

People are looking at them. One older woman gives them a bona fide death glare, but most folks just glance up for an instant—the women curious, the men hopeful—see Sam, and then hastily avert their eyes, suddenly fascinated by the back of the Cheerios box.

The front doors are blessedly in sight when a man steps up and blocks the path out of the aisle.

“I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new in town?” Kevin is following close enough that he almost stumbles into Sam’s back when Sam stops short.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. “I’m in a hurry right now.”

The guy doesn’t step aside. He looks like a used car salesman to Kevin, all capped teeth and shiny hair.

“I just wanted to say, I know how hard it is, being an omega around here. I’m a big supporter of mixed sex rights. Collected money for the state equal rights amendment last summer.”

“I appreciate that,” Sam says, in a tone that suggests he doesn’t, and tries to step around him.

The guy shifts his position and ends up deeper in Sam’s personal space. “People don’t get what omegas have to offer. The omegas I’ve dated are so much better than women—less drama, more adventurous. You deserve to be treated right.”

Kevin might as well be invisible. It’s humiliating. Sam’s an adult, and he can surely handle this, but it’s still goddamn shameful that Kevin’s just standing here watching his friend get sexually harassed. And then there’s the other part of it: his current omega contact high aside, Kevin’s not into men, but it still burns that this guy assumes Kevin couldn’t possibly be with Sam.

“He’s not interested. Back off,” Kevin says. He thinks he sounds convincingly authoritative, but the guy just smirks. It’s probably Kevin’s smell. After what he’s been through in the last hour he must stink of fear.

“He smells interested to me,” the guy says. He’s still standing in the middle of the aisle, the last obstacle blocking Kevin’s way out of this purgatorial grocery store.

“Move or I’ll move you,” Kevin says.

Sam abruptly wraps an arm around Kevin, putting his body between the two of them. “My friend’s not feeling well,” Sam says. “I really need to get him home.” He elbows past the guy, still holding Kevin to him.

“What were you thinking?” Sam whispers in his ear. “No one knows where the bunker is. We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile. You make a scene in Lebanon, next thing you know we all have to drive an hour every time we need milk.”

Kevin makes a sound that could be construed as agreement or apology. He’s not capable of anything more coherent because his face is pressed against Sam’s side, and he’s forgotten about the mundane details of reality. Smell is one thing; touch is another entirely. It feels like an electrical current, a circuit closed. He wants to wrap himself up in Sam, wants to melt into his skin and disappear.

He doesn’t know he’s outside until he feels the cool air. Sam doesn’t disentangle himself, even though there’s surely no more danger that Kevin will make a scene defending his honor. They stumble over each other’s feet as they shuffle toward the car. Kevin’s pretty sure that at some point the feeling of floating becomes literal as Sam lifts him off the ground.

They collapse against the driver’s side of the Impala, Kevin’s back pressed against the door. They aren’t kissing, nothing quite so decisive. It’s more like passionate nuzzling: Sam’s roughly shaven cheek sliding against his temple, Sam’s fingers in his hair. Kevin’s hand strokes the small of Sam’s back, just under the too-tight edge of that ridiculous shirt. Sam is flushed with the warmth of his heat, his cheeks pink and his mouth glossy red.

Lust isn’t the right word for what Kevin feels when he looks at him. Or rather, it’s exactly the right word and still totally inadequate. It’s the cold thrill of free fall and a tenderness so sharp it hurts. For one perfect instant all his fear and loneliness burn away, and the world blooms into Technicolor.

Kevin’s face is pressed against Sam’s throat. Sam’s skin is sticky with his heat sweat, and Kevin feels the urge to lick it away. Somehow the crude physicality of that thought snaps him back into some measure of self-awareness. You don’t lick your friends. You really, really don’t lick your guy friends.

“I should probably stop touching you now,” Kevin says reluctantly.

“You probably should.” Sam doesn’t let go.

Kevin tears himself away and dashes for the passenger door without looking back. He’d never break free otherwise. His longing to jump back into Sam’s arms is overwhelming.

“Sorry,” Kevin says when he’s got the car safely between them.

“No, no, that was totally my fault. I shouldn’t have put my arm around you like that. I’d, uh, I’d kind of forgotten what it’s like to touch an alpha when I’m in heat.”

Kevin’s brain is still fuzzy, and he almost objects that he’s not an alpha. But then he remembers Sam’s one of those people who calls everyone who smells like a man an alpha, and everyone who smells like woman an omega, instead of only applying those terms to mixed sex people. Kevin can see why that’s useful, even if in practice single-sexed people are still mostly just filed away in his brain as ‘normal.’

Sam sighs. “Let’s just roll down the windows and try to get home as quickly as possible.”

Kevin hangs his head out the passenger window like a dog for the first ten minutes of the drive because if he didn’t he’d be in Sam’s lap, even though every time he tries to imagine an actual sex act he’s caught up short by the reality of Sam’s body. No matter how many hormones are surging through his brain he can’t quite convince himself he wants to have sex with a man. His craving is both visceral and non-specific: he wants to touch, he wants to merge, and he doesn’t have the vaguest idea how any of that would work. Gradually the ache settles down into something manageable, and he allows himself to sink back into the car.

“So, what made you take off from the bunker like that?” Sam says casually, like he’s been waiting for Kevin to calm down enough to start in on cross-examination.

Kevin’s instinct is to say that he’s not the Winchesters’ prisoner, and that he doesn’t need a permission slip to go outside if he wants to. Except he’s just forfeited the right to say that by calling Sam to come get him like he’s a kid who needs his mom to pick him up early from school. He’s pissed at himself for that moment of weakness, for having given up whatever small right he’d had to claim independence.

At another time the loss might cut deeper, but it’s soothed by a glow in his chest that feels like the golden moment when he’s had just enough whiskey, the ever-elusive sweet spot between sober and drunk. If his brain chemistry is a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’—and he’s pretty sure right now that it is—then heat wins out over panic attack all the way. It feels like his mood has had a hard reset. He’s okay with that. He’ll take moderate sexual confusion and irrational exuberance over the icy fear of grim death any day.

“You remember when I came into town with you a couple of weeks ago and we split up in the grocery store?” Kevin says. Sam nods. “There was this cute redhead about my age working at the bakery. We talked the whole time you were shopping and she seemed kind of into me. And today is the same day of the week, so I thought maybe she’d be working, and if I went there I could coincidentally bump into her again.”

Sam smiles way too big, like he’s a proud parent whose son’s taking a cheerleader to prom. “Did you see her?”

“No, I freaked out before I even made it to the bakery.” Honestly, Kevin figures it’s probably better that way. His plan hadn’t extended any farther than getting a pretty girl to smile at him. It’s not like he could ask her out. Hell, he can barely come up above ground without prior written permission. And if they did go on a date, what then? He’s a high school dropout with no job and no remotely plausible backstory. What would he tell her? And if somehow, impossibly, she was okay with whatever pack of lies he fed her, he’d just be setting her up to be murdered by all the countless factions who want to screw with him. It’s pointless even to dream. He’s more likely to walk on the moon than he is to touch a naked woman.

“Sorry,” Sam says, and he sounds like he means it. “I know it’s hard for you right now. The bunker’s kind of a lonely place.”

Kevin shakes his head. “It’s not a big deal. Honestly, I’m on so many suppressants that I barely even think about girls most of the time.” In high school he’d been on the same mild suppressants as most kids his age, the sort that smooth the natural peaks and valleys of sexual desire into rolling hills, rather than flattening them entirely. What he’s on now is industrial strength. He’s lucky he can feel anything below the waist.

“It’s just, when you went into heat it got under my skin a little. Woke some things up. That’s all.”

Sam puts on his ‘concerned grown up’ face. Kevin’s never found it all that convincing, but it’s especially unimpressive with Sam flush, sweaty, and about to rip out of his tiny shirt.

“You need to take better care of yourself. The tablets are important, but neither of us wants you to make yourself sick.” One part of Kevin rejects this idea out of hand—they say they don’t want him to make himself sick, but if taking care of himself meant the translations slowed down, they’d feed him speed until he got back on the hamster wheel, just like before. But another part of him, the one that feels fizzy and warm, lets the words slip through his defenses and come to rest somewhere softer. He entertains the possibility that Sam means what he says.

“Those hardcore suppressants are harsh enough to clear a forest,” Sam goes on. “I should know. Me and Dean used that crap for years. We only went off it when we knew we had a home in the bunker, a place we felt safe. It’s your home too, you know. If it makes you more comfortable, I’ll make sure we’re off on a hunt when you go into rut.”

Kevin can’t imagine anything he wants less. He’d gone off suppressants for the first time since puberty while he was Crowley’s hostage. He hadn’t even known he was going into rut until a burst of anger made him punch Crowley in the face. Crowley had smiled casually and snapped Kevin’s wrist. Kevin had restrained his urge to hurt the smug bastard for the rest of the week, but he’d wanted to claw off his own skin the entire time. He’d bitten himself over and over again like a traumatized rat, the pain of his teeth tearing into his flesh the only thing that soothed him. There’s still a silvery pair of crescents on his upper arm where one of the bites got infected. The second time it hit him he’d been hiding out in an abandoned building in Iowa. He’d run himself into the wall until he couldn’t stand up and then cried on the floor.

When the Winchesters picked him up and put him on the houseboat he made them buy him the strongest suppressants they could find, and he’s been taking them ever since. He knows there’s something wrong with him—normal guys like going into rut. Hell, there’s a whole black market of chemicals designed to imitate the experience. But Kevin never wants to feel that way again.

“No,” he says sharply. “I won’t do that. I’m not going off my meds.” Sam looks over at him like he heard the pain in his voice. Kevin tries to smooth it over. “I mean, thanks for the offer, but no.”

“It’s okay. Totally your decision.” Sam ruffles Kevin’s hair reassuringly, but then his fingers linger and trail down the side of Kevin’s face. Kevin tips his cheek into them. Sam jerks his hand away like it’s been burned, and returns it to the steering wheel where it belongs.

“Honestly, I don’t know why you’re putting yourself through this,” Kevin says. “Healthy or not, it seems like it sucks.” Sam’s sexual cycles are pretty much the definition of ‘not Kevin’s business,’ but hell, Sam just asked him about his, and it’s kind of hard to think about anything else for as long as he’s stuck in this car.

“Nah, it’s part of being human. It doesn’t suck.” He glances over at Kevin. “Not for me, anyway. We were on suppressants growing up, obviously, but Stanford was super liberal and hippie-ish, and everyone was going natural there. I loved my heats. And not just for the obvious reasons, although that was great too. But even when Jess had to go to class, I had women friends,” Sam stumbles, “I mean, omega women friends”--it amuses Kevin that even Sam can’t always keep the labels straight—“and a couple of omega guys. And we’d hang out. There was this one little stretch of beach we knew about where there wouldn’t be any other people, and we’d ride our bikes out there and swim. Everything is so much more intense when you’re in heat. Every apple is the most apple-y apple you’ve ever eaten. The water is colder and the sand is hotter and the sun is like this physical presence covering you.” He gestures vaguely at the unremarkable Kansas sky. “And I just, I loved them all so much. We all felt connected to each other in this beautiful way, you know?” Kevin doesn’t know. He’s never had an experience like that in his life.

Sam shrugs. “I think when I went off the suppressants again some part of me expected it to be like that. I mean, I’d braced myself for the ‘no sex’ part, but not so much the part where I’m alone in a windowless room marathoning Game of Thrones. Honestly, I think maybe I kind of drove Dean into the arms of the twins.”

“You didn’t . . . I mean, not with Dean. Right?” Kevin says. People aren’t supposed to be attracted to close blood relatives. Even when he’s in heat, an omega’s brother might as well be another omega.

“No! Jesus. Nothing like that.” Sam raises his eyes toward Heaven dramatically. “Just, according to Dean I’ve been ‘super huggy’ over the past few days, and I think it weirded him out.”

Kevin smiles. “My mom was like that too. I used to look forward to it when I was little because it meant we got to cuddle on the couch and watch movies.” And then he’d hated it when he got older, because no teenage boy wants to cuddle with his mom. He wishes now he’d hugged her more when he had the chance.

Sam is watching him fondly, and Kevin thinks it must be shitty to be so hungry for a little affection that you scare off your own brother. Kevin may not understand all the stuff Sam said about apple-y apples, but loneliness he gets just fine.

“I wish I could be the friend you hang out with, like you had in college. And we could go to the beach and eat apples and whatever. But I’m not an omega, so it would just be really weird.”

“Really weird,” Sam agrees. “But thank you.” His hand moves to touch Kevin’s face again, but this time he catches it mid-gesture and returns it to the wheel. Neither of them has much more to say after that. Kevin shuts his eyes against the wind and tries to imagine the mundane warmth of sunlight on his arm is a transcendent experience, but the scent of Sam’s heat, diffused by the open window, isn’t enough to take him where he wants to go.

When they get home Sam disappears quietly back into his bedroom, and Kevin spends thirty minutes in the shower, jerking off confusedly and trying in vain to scrub the heat smell out of his pores.

Afterward he goes back to his spot in the library and stares at the tablet. He thinks about Sam instead. He smells the sweet, confusing scent that’s recycled through the bunker’s worthless ventilation system. He pictures the neat, undecorated bedroom where Sam’s lying around alone watching his laptop. He thinks about the cute redheaded girl at the bakery. He thinks about his mom. He picks up his phone and dials Sam’s number.

“Please tell me you’re not out of the bunker again already,” Sam says.

“What? Oh, no, no. I just . . .” Kevin wonders if this was a bad idea. “I was thinking maybe you’re bored?” he says, because ‘bored’ feels less loaded than ‘lonely’.

“Um.” Sam sounds thrown. “I guess?”

“There’s a chess board in the library, and I know you’ve got one in your room. I thought we could each get one out, and play over the phone. Just because we can’t be in the same room doesn’t mean we can’t hang out. If you want.”

“I’d like that,” Sam says, and Kevin swears he can hear Sam’s smile. He blames the excessive dose of hormones floating through the air for the prickling in his eyes.


End file.
